SSTI Digest

NSF would receive $4.47 billion dollars in FY2002, up $56.1 million (or 1.3 percent) from FY2001 under the President’s budget request. S&T highlights are:

The Administration's budget request eliminates the New Markets Venture Capital Program, the New Markets and the Venture Capital Technical Assistance Grants. The programs are designed to increase access to equity capital and technical assistance to women, minorities and to businesses located in low- and moderate-income rural areas and inner cities. The SBA budget also eliminates BusinessLINC, a New Markets initiative linking large and small businesses in mentoring and direct technical assistance relationships.



Other potentially technology-relevant highlights include:

The FY 2002 budget for Transportation proposes $59.5 billion, the highest funding level in the Department’s history. A summary of research and technology related programs follows:

Whether it is "pink slip parties" in San Diego, the Washington DC beltway, or Chicago to encourage networking and placement of laid-off information technology (IT) workers or Wall Street analysts lamenting the condition of the tech-related stocks, much of the talk in the IT hot spots of the U.S. has been doom and gloom. Many other areas of the country, though, whose economies do not have a preponderance of dot-com companies that went bust are still trying hard to educate and retain IT workers.



The spin of the stories and headlines on the release of When Can You Start?, the latest IT employment survey from the Information Technology Association of America (ITAA) gives some indication of the perceived condition of local IT worker situations. Demand for new IT workers is down from last year -- way down. The good news is the gap or shortage between workers needed and those available is shrinking quickly -- very quickly.

The latest Issue Brief from the National Science Foundation (NSF) shows research and development (R&D) expenditures remain heavily concentrated in a few states. Ten states -- California, New York, Michigan, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Texas, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Washington, and Maryland -- account for nearly two-thirds of national R&D investments. With the exception of California, which can claim one-fifth of the nation's R&D activity, there has been some movement in rankings of the top ten in the last four NSF reports:

The Council on Competitiveness has received a $2.3 million federal grant to support the establishment of BEST, a new nonprofit organization designed to turn around the critical shortage of women and minorities in the high technology workforce. The National Science Foundation awarded the grant, which includes funds from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the National Institutes of Health, and the U. S. Departments of Agriculture, Commerce-NIST, Defense, and Energy.

The state-by-state results for the 2000 SBIR Phase II awards are presented on the accompanying webpage — as reported individually by 9 of the 10 participating federal agencies and compiled by SSTI. NASA awards will not be made until this fall. Totals may not reflect new awards or cancellations made by an agency after the initial award announcements. Abstract information for funded SBIR projects may be obtained on each agency’s SBIR website or by calling the federal agencies directly. Agency web sites are available on SSTI’s resource page.



The SBIR Phase II table for 2000 is available at: http://www.ssti.org/Digest/Tables/040601t2.htm

President Bush is nominating Floyd Kvamme as co-chair of the President's Committee of Advisors on Science & Technology (PCAST). Mr. Kvamme is a Partner with Kleiner Perkins, a high-tech venture capital firm based in California.